Recently, spread of personal computers has resulted in the increased number of computer users. Thus, in view of expediency of users utilizing various computer applications, it has become typical to improve the operability by providing such applications with GUI's being a computer usage environment utilizing images.
Creation of GUI programs is conducted by a so-called GUI builder, so as to improve the productivity of GUI programs. According to the GUI builder, each component constituting the GUI (hereinafter called “GUI component”) is dragged and dropped so as to paste the component onto a screen. Thereby, generation and attribute seffing of the GUI components are performed, so that a minimum program concerning a screen layout is automatically generated. Meanwhile, processing programs for the GUI component are coded such as by programmers. It is assumed here that the GUI components have been defined as objects by an object oriented language.
In conventional creation methods for GUI programs, however, since the processing programs for GUI components are coded after conducting a screen layout, there are caused problems as described in the following. Namely, since the processing programs are closely related to GUI components, if the GUI components are replaced with a modification of screen layout, the processing programs are required to be substantially changed. Further, while each GUI component is allocated with a variable for conducting such as assignment and indication, even if this variable is simply changed, the processing programs for GUI components are required to be modified. Thus, the conventional creation methods for GUI programs have been limited in terms of the improvement of productivity.
The present invention has been achieved in view of the conventional problems as described above, and it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a technique for automatically relating GUI components with processing programs thereof so as to eliminate the necessity for modifying the processing programs with a change in GUI components, to thereby improve productivity of GUI programs.